Contact:
philipp.brandt [at] sciencespo.fr
Sciences Po
L.ES02
1 Place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin
75007 Paris
I am an assistant professor of sociology at Sciences Po, Paris, and a chercheur at the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CSO). Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Mannheim, Germany. I hold a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University in New York City.
In my research, I develop computational approaches to study work trajectories and activities in emergent, precarious, and otherwise unstable settings. My substantive projects address a series of complementary questions, such as how experts define their role and identity in the digital era, how street-level bureaucrats operate in a hostile political setting, and how immigrant workers array jobs and gigs into careers outside of established paths. I use different established methods and techniques to address these issues but focus in particular on integrating ideas from qualitative research into analyses of large-scale behavioral records for making new sociological observations. This approach is geared toward capturing the micro-level unfolding of recent technological and economic changes, which I analyze in important and analytically productive cases: data science’s early formation, a US federal economic development agency, New York City taxi drivers, and work trajectories of immigrant workers in German firms. My findings inform a larger argument about non-standard work by revealing how workers leverage gaps between their work’s underlying social arrangements and overt appearances for distinct gains.
My CV is here.
Brandt, P. (2022). Sociology's Stake in Data Science. Sociologica, 16(2), 149-166.
Brandt, P., & Timmermans, S. (2021). Abductive logic of inquiry for quantitative research in the digital age. Sociological Science, 8, 191-210.
Dorschel, R., & Brandt, P. (2021). Professionalization via Ambiguity. The Discursive Construction of Data Scientists in Higher Education and the Labor Market. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 50(3-4), 193-210.
Brandt, P., Schrank, A., & Whitford, J. (2018). Brokerage and boots on the ground: Complements or substitutes in the manufacturing extension partnerships? Economic Development Quarterly, 32(4), 288-299.
Hoffman, M. A., Cointet, J. P., Brandt, P., Key, N., & Bearman, P. (2018). The (Protestant) Bible, the (printed) sermon, and the word (s): The semantic structure of the Conformist and Dissenting Bible, 1660–1780. Poetics, 68, 89-103.
Brandt, P., & Whitford, J. (2017). Fixing network failures? The contested case of the American Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Socio-Economic Review, 15(2), 331-357.